About Alan Gratz

Missed “Join, or Die” the first time?
Not a problem!

Back when The League of Seven debuted on August 19, 2014, I offered a limited edition chapbook featuring the short story “Join, or Die,” featuring Ben Franklin, Mr. Rivets, the Boston Tea Party, and giant sea monsters. What more could you ask for, right? Well, if you didn’t get a chapbook the first time around, you can now read the story for free online at my publisher’s web site, tor.com! Go give it a read!

There were a hundred stories told in the streets of Five Points about the giant gangster Mose. That he was eight feet tall and six feet wide; that his stovepipe hat was actually an upside-down smokestack torn from a Cheyenne locomotive; that his fists were the size of Cherokee hams, his feet so large it took the leather of two whole cows for him to be shod. That Mose had the strength of ten men…

It’s here! The League of Seven prequel short story “Join, or Die” is back from the printer, and it looks terrific! Wendi and I spent all last night punching holes and stitching in the binding by hand. The binding we’re using is waxed linen thread. I wanted to stitch them rather than staple them to give the chapbook an old-fashioned feel. The hero of the story is printer Ben Franklin, after all!

On Friday they go back to the printer for the final trim, where they’ll take about an inch off the outside edge, evening everything up. Then I’ll deliver them to Malaprop’s Bookstore, where I’ll sign and number them and package them up with signed and personalized copies of The League of Seven to ship out on Monday!

The League of Seven goes on sale everywhere on August 19, 2014–which means you have less than one week left to get the free, specially-printed short story “Join, or Die” when you pre-order The League of Seven from Malaprop’s Bookstore! The chapbook is a Malaprop’s pre-order exclusive, and once they’re gone, they’re gone! I hope you’ll order one for yourself or a young reader in your life if you haven’t already.

Serbian-American inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856. (158 years ago!) In real life, Tesla was an electrical genius in the early days of practical electrical experimentation. At the beginning of his career, he worked for Thomas Edison. He made big improvements to Edison’s system of delivering electricity to houses and businesses, but when Edison didn’t reward him enough for his work, Tesla quit and went into business for himself. Soon he and Edison became real-life enemies in the “War of Currents,” with Tesla promoting his alternating current (the kind we use in homes today) and Edison stumping for direct current, which was popular at the time. The argument got pretty nasty–Edison even electrocuted an elephant and invented the electric chair, all to try and prove that Tesla’s electrical system was more dangerous!

Tesla and Edison are enemies in The League of Seven too, but of course in my book history goes in a very different direction. Since “lektricity” is what feeds the Mangleborn, the giant monsters that slumber beneath the earth, electricity is a dangerous and forbidden science. Some electrical engineers, like Nikola Tesla, work for the Septemberist Society, whose mission includes keeping the practical uses of electricity a secret so the world isn’t destroyed by giant monsters again. Others, like Edison, would love to see those monsters rise…

In honor of Tesla’s birthday, here’s a short scene from The League of Seven, introducing my version of Nikola Tesla. He’s…a little odd.

“The power station is just through here,” Mr. Rivets said. But as he approached the other door, it ka-chunked, followed by a similar ka-chunk from the outside door—the unmistakable sounds of doors locking.

Hachi drew her dagger.

Something started to hum within the walls, like the sound of a distant steam engine. But different somehow. Archie didn’t recognize the sound, but it meant something to Fergus. He pushed himself up off the wall and frowned, listening to it.

“I know you’ve come for me like the rest!” a man’s voice cried through the gramophone horn on the wall, making them all jump. “You won’t get out of this room alive. I’ll leave you in there until you die, then go out at night and slip your dead bodies into the water, where you’ll be washed miles downstream before anyone finds you!”

“Well, that’s some welcome,” Fergus said.

“I thought you knew this person,” Hachi said to Archie and Mr. Rivets.

“If you will remember, sir,” Mr. Rivets continued, “we came here eight years ago when Mr. and Mrs. Dent used the Septemberist archives to identify an odd specimen that had washed up near Charles Town.”

“You could be impostors!” Tesla said through the speaker. “Yes. That’s it. Impostors!”

“You’d still know the Septemberist code words if you were brainwashed!”

“If you’d just open the door, we could show you we’re not brainwashed,” Fergus said.

“Oh, very clever! Yes! I open the door, and you put one of those bug things on me and brainwash me like all the others,” Tesla said. “No thank you!”

“Wait, I think I remember you now,” Archie said. “You had these shiny silver discs with holes in the middle of them. From Atlantis, you said. You put them in a machine with lektric coils that glowed orange, but it melted them. So you just used the machine to make toast instead. I was little, but you showed me. We had strawberry jam on toast.”

The speaker was quiet for a moment.

“Of course you would know that,” Tesla said finally. “Just like you know the Septemberist password. You’re the boy who was here before, but you and your friends have those little bug things in your necks!”

“I’m not letting you in!” Tesla interrupted. “And you’re not getting out. Not without frying yourself. I may be the last Septemberist left, but I’m not going down without a fight!”

“He’s lost his mind,” Hachi said.

“Fried? What does he mean by that? Is he going to heat up the room?” Archie asked.

“Nae. Listen,” Fergus said. He was listening to that hum again. “We’re in a Franklin cage.”

“A what?” Archie asked.

“A who?” Hachi asked.

“Did someone just say ‘Franklin cage’?” Tesla said over the speaker.

Fergus put a hand out to the wall and touched it, but nothing happened. He nodded.

“Franklin was a Yankee inventor. He experimented with lektricity,” Fergus said. “Edison had some of his old papers. I saw them. Franklin was a genius.”

“You’ll remember Benjamin Franklin, sir,” Mr. Rivets told Archie. “A local printer and diplomat from Philadelphia who was instrumental in convincing the Iroquois to accept the Yankees into their confederacy after the Darkness fell. He was eventually recruited by the Septemberists, and worked in secret for them for decades.”

“He had this idea, Franklin did,” Fergus said. “You take a metal box, or a cage, or a can, doesn’t matter, long as it’s metal on the outside. You run lektricity to it, and the lektricity stays on the outside. Spreads around it, but not inside it, see?” He put his hand to the wall again. “No charge on the inside, but all around the outside is lektrified.” Fergus frowned as he thought. “But to generate the kind of lektricity that would fry us, that would take—”

“Who is that?” Tesla asked. “Who’s talking? How do you know so much about lektricity?”

A white-hot bolt of lektricity leaped from the dagger to Fergus’s outstretched hand. Kazaaak! But Fergus wasn’t jolted or thrown across the room. Archie and Hachi stepped back in fear as lightning arced from the dagger to his hand in a constant stream. All over Fergus’s skin, the black lines danced and rearranged themselves.

“Fergus, what—?” Archie asked.

“I—I don’t know,” Fergus said. His startled face glowed in the lektric light. “But keep back. I should be dead. This should be killing me, but I don’t even feel it.”

Lektricity surged between the dagger and Fergus’s outstretched hand, more and more of it, until the humming sound outside the room died and the sparks stopped coming. Fergus staggered back and stared at his hand. The black lines on his skin were moving again, rearranging themselves.

The door to the inside of the facility kachunked, and a tall, thin man with a metal cage on his head ran inside. He wore oversized rubber gloves and rubber boots, and metal foil stuck out of his sleeves and pant legs like he was wearing tin Long Johns.

“How did you do that?” Tesla demanded, his curiosity apparently overcoming his paranoia. “That was one hundred milliamperes! Where did it go? You should be dead!”

“I know. I think I—I think I absorbed it,” Fergus said. He tapped the ends of his thumb and forefinger together, and lektricity sparked between them.

“Moj bog,” Tesla muttered. He took a screwdriver out of his pocket and touched it to Fergus’s skin, but nothing happened. “No discharge! You’re nonconductive now. Come with me.”

Before any of them could protest, Tesla grabbed Fergus and pulled him inside. Tesla forgot he was wearing a cage on his head and banged into the door frame. He cursed in some Old World language and turned to them, embarrassed. “To keep the voices out of my head,” he whispered, tapping the cage. “So they can’t control me.”

Archie might have thought Tesla was crazy if he hadn’t heard voices in his head himself. The voice of a Mangleborn. JANDAL A HAAD, the Swarm Queen had said. Like she was speaking just to him. Like she was . . . calling his name.

Archie shook off the memory. Hachi was tapping at her dagger, seeing if it was going erupt in lightning again. It didn’t, and she plucked it from the wall and followed Archie into Atlantis.

Read more adventures of Archie, Hachi, Fergus, Mr. Rivets, and Nikola Tesla in The League of Seven, debuting August 19, 2014. And don’t forget, you can get a free prequel short story chapbook when you pre-order The League of Seven from my hometown indie, Malaprop’s Bookstore!

Each month we’ll post a new challenge for readers here at the Septemberist Society. This month’s challenge, draw your favorite character, then scan it or take a picture of it, and send us the image. We’ll post it in the Fan Art Gallery here on the site!

Yes, Archie, Hachi, Fergus, and Mr. Rivets all appear on the cover of The League of Seven. That’s how the terrific illustrator, Brett Helquist, saw them when he read The League of Seven. You can draw them like he did, or draw them the way you see them! (That’s author Alan Gratz’s drawing of Mr. Rivets on the left there.) Or maybe you want to draw a character who doesn’t appear on the cover. We can’t wait to see what you do!

Get a free, specially-printed
short story when you pre-orderThe League of Seven from
Malaprop’s Bookstore

The League of Seven debuts on August 19, 2014. Buy the book NOW from my hometown indie, Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, NC, and you’ll also receive the League of Sevenprequel short story “Join, or Die” for free with your signed and personalized book!“Join, or Die” features Ben Franklin, the Boston Tea Party, and giant monsters. What more could you ask for? 😉

This special prequel story isn’t available anywhere else. And it’s not digital either–I’m partnering with Malaprop’s to print it up as a chapbook and we’re hand-sewing the things together! This is an exclusive treat only for folks who buy The League of Seven from Malaprop’s. Don’t live in Asheville? Not a problem–Malaprop’s will ship The League of Seven to you the day it debuts!

I’ve written a second League of Seven prequel story, “The Hero of the Five Points,” which will be posted for free on Tor.com. The story is about Archie’s parents Dalton and Agatha meeting for the first time and battling Mose, a legendary giant of the “Gangs of New York” era. A certain League of Seven villain also makes an appearance, as does the redoubtable Mr. Rivets! I’ll link to the story when it becomes available.